Gould, the museum’s director, had done his best to prepare for the hurricane. He had stacked sandbags at the museum as well as moved several of its rail cars to the highest point of the museum’s rail yard.

“We’d been through this drill before,” he said.

But when he returned to Galveston afterward, he was stunned by the storm’s destruction at the museum, 123 Rosenberg.

Floodwater topped seven feet and gutted the inside of its four buildings. It destroyed many of the museum’s model trains. Mold claimed paper artifacts like scrapbooks, newspaper clippings and railroad passes.

There was also eight feet of standing water in the rail yard that flooded the museum’s nearly 50 train cars and locomotives.

Gould estimates the museum incurred approximately $7 million in damage from Ike. He also estimates that 90 percent of the artifacts inside the museum were destroyed.

After the storm, fish flopped and snakes squirmed in the museum’s muddy rail yard, Gould said.

“It was really nasty,” he said.

The museum has some insurance, but only approximately 5 percent of its estimated $7 million in damages will be covered, Gould said.

The museum has received approximately $5,000 in donations since Hurricane Ike, he said.

“We don’t have a big budget,” Gould said. “We’re just a museum. We are sustained by the people who walk through that gate.”

The museum, he said, plans to replace four of its five operating locomotives, all of which were at least 50 years old.

It also plans to restore the museum’s flood-damaged Glen Fee passenger car, the lone surviving car from the American Freedom Train of 1947 to 1949 that visited Galveston and all 48 states in the continental United States.

The Glen Fee is now rusted inside with debris on the floor and mildew on the ceiling. Its restoration is estimated to cost $100,000, Gould said.

FEMA is working with the museum, said Bettina Hutchings, a FEMA spokeswoman in Galveston. FEMA’s preliminary estimate would potentially cover 27 projects at the museum worth just over $5 million.

That amount would be lowered by any amount of insurance money that the museum receives, Hutchings said.

The museum is planning to reopen in stages perhaps as early as September or October, Gould said.

John Bertini, chairman of the museum’s board of directors, said there has never been any question about whether the museum will reopen.

“Our real concern was bringing the museum back to the state it was in or better,” Bertini said.